


Remember to Rise Up

by EtCorSolus



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotionally Constipated Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Found Family, Getting Together, Good Parent Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Insecure Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Light Angst, M/M, Mentioned Jaskier | Dandelion, Mentioned Lambert (The Witcher), Mentioned Triss Merigold, Mentioned Vesemir (The Witcher), Mentioned Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 12:00:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29542026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EtCorSolus/pseuds/EtCorSolus
Summary: "Remember to rise up, and it's okay to fall."Ciri's parents have just died in a car accident and now she has moved in with Geralt. She doesn't know much, but she knows there is something going on between her new guardian and his best friend. She has no idea how right she is.
Relationships: Eskel/Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia
Comments: 2
Kudos: 31





	Remember to Rise Up

**Author's Note:**

> Geralt/Eskel is my OTP and I will ship them in any verse until I die. That being said I decided to write something for these beautiful dopes and try my hand at fanfic. This is my first time writing fanfic and the first bit of any kind of writing I've done in a long while, so please be gentle with me. I hope you enjoy. I won't promise to write more, but I will promise to try.
> 
> Also, if you notice any errors in spelling and such please let me know, this was not beta-ed and I proof read it myself and I almost always miss something.
> 
> Title and opening line is from a poem called O Fear by Anisha Joseph.

“ _Remember to rise up, and it's okay to fall.”_

At first, she really doesn't think much of it. Granted when Cirilla first starts spending most of her time with Geralt she's not thinking much of anything besides how fiercely she misses her parents. Her grandmother is busy, a successful lawyer has little free time, and she's always been a little cold if Ciri is perfectly honest. She doesn't doubt that her grandmother loves her but she doesn't really seem to know what to do with a fourteen year old girl, so Ciri lives with Geralt. As a close friend of her father's, Ciri knows him. He showed up to all her birthday parties and came around once a month, like clockwork, to take her to do anything from movie marathons at his home to a day running around a theme park.

None of this really prepares either of them for living together but at least she doesn't have to move in with a stranger or try to make her grandmother's house, that looks like something from a magazine and feels like it shouldn't be lived in at all, feel like a home. Geralt's house is not messy, but it's clearly lived in, and he's certainly not as rigid as her grandmother. The first few days, Ciri can see he's out of his depth but that he's trying. He tries so hard to connect with her and it doesn't _help_ , really, but it makes something in her chest loosen to see that he cares enough to. It's not until she's been there for a week that she really lets go of the lingering resentment, not towards Geralt necessarily but towards the whole awful situation she's found herself in, when she overhears him on the phone.

“I don't know what the fuck I'm doing, Eskel,” he sighs and, she can see from her position just at the end of the hall behind the couch where he sits, drags his free hand down his face. “How am I supposed to talk to her? What do you say to a fourteen year old girl that just had her whole life turned upside down? Maybe she should have just gone to Calanthe.” He pauses while Eskel says something to him and heaves another sigh. “I know that, I just can't fathom why they wanted me to have her.” Another pause. “Of course I love her, like she's my own kid,” Ciri's heart clenches at the way he says it, like he's stating an absolute fact that everyone knows, “but what the hell do I know about raising a teenage girl? I know she's upset, she has to be, but she won't talk to me about it... Well, no I haven't asked her directly... Because how god damn awkward would that be? I don't want to make her any more uncomfortable than she already must be... Yeah. I guess I have to try, don't I?”

Ciri backs slowly down the hall and into the spare room that Geralt has told her is hers. She drops onto the big bed with the plain navy comforter that Geralt has told her they can replace with whatever she wants and stares at the white paint on the wall that Geralt has told her they can paint over with whatever color she wants and she finally cries. She hasn't since the accident, not a single tear. When her grandmother showed up at her house at nine thirty at night Ciri knew something was wrong. When Calanthe told her, with the clinical tone of someone reciting facts they'd memorized for a presentation, that her parents had been hit on their way home, that her mother was dead on the scene and her father in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, Ciri hadn't been able to get past the stunned shock to grief. When Geralt had turned up in the morning, red eyed and timid, she'd felt only a resigned numbness. When he stood behind her as her parents were lowered into the ground at her feet, with his big hand covering her shoulder, she kept waiting to cry. _Where are they,_ she thought, _where are the tears? Why can't I find them?_ But now, sitting in Geralt's lived-in home, in a room that he's promised she can make her own, with the boxes of her things still packed against the wall, and the sound of his voice saying he loves her, she can't make them stop.

He finds her there, tear streaked and gasping, and she sees the flash of blank faced panic before he quickly hides it and then he's there at her side. He's wrapping his big arm around her shoulders and pressing her face to his chest and rocking her like a child and she cries so hard she shakes and screams with it and he just holds on to her. An anchor in a storm. She has no idea how long they sit there, but eventually her sobs peter out and her tears dry and she becomes aware of his shirt sticking to her face where she's surely ruined it with salt water and snot. She feels his chest expand and contract as he takes a deep inhale and blows out the breath.

“I won't tell you I'll always know what to say but... I'm here.” His shoulder shifts in a one-sided shrug. “I know I'm not your father, and I know you'd give anything to have them back, and I know it doesn't make it better but I'm here.” Ciri takes a breath to match his and sinks a little further into him.

“Thank you,” she whispers because she doesn't really know what to say but maybe that's okay.

Things get a little bit better after that. Geralt takes her to pick out paint and a new bed set and he buys her a big bookshelf for the small collection she's begun to amass, and when they get home there's an unfamiliar truck parked on the street in front of his little house. The truck is old, faded gray, and a little rusty and there's a dent in one of the doors and the tailgate looks a little lopsided and as they park a man gets out of the drivers side and she sees Geralt's face light up out of the corner of her eye. The man is tall, taller than Geralt by a few inches, and broad and handsome even with the prominent scars marring his cheek. His smile is open and warm and his voice reminds her of rolling thunder heard in the distance of a summer storm.

“I thought you said four, Wolf, been waiting almost an hour,” he says with a teasing smile.

“Got a few extra things,” Geralt grunts back and they go to the back of Geralt's SUV and start unloading. “Ciri, this is Eskel. Eskel, Ciri.”

“Nice to finally meet you, Geralt's told me plenty,” Eskel rumbles to her as he passes her a bag. Ciri manages a smile, she's still feeling a little raw, and turns to go into the house. Eskel spends the day with them, painting Ciri's walls lavender and putting together her new bookshelf and he helps her sort through the four boxes of books while Geralt wanders off to the kitchen to cook dinner. “I've got a decent sized collection of books as well, I can bring some you may like tomorrow, if you want.” She nods and tries for a smile. “I didn't know your parents very well, but Geralt's told me some. Talked about you a lot though, he's not very good at talking most of the time.” Another nod, she can't bring herself to look at him, doesn't want him to see the way her eyes have gone watery and red.

“Ciri.” His voice is quiet and soft in the space between them when they're alone for the first time all day, like he doesn't want to spook her and she finally meets his eyes. For a piece of a moment, the look on his face reminds her of her father, the fond, gentle smile he always gave her when she was upset. “You don't know me yet, living with Geralt you will, but you don't yet and that's fine. But I wanted to tell you, because I know him and I'm sure he still hasn't, he loves you and he's trying, harder than I've ever seen him try to do anything. I won't ask to you to take it easy on him, that wouldn't be fair to you, but just... remember that he's trying and that he won't give up trying, either. Not for anything. And... I'm trying, too. If you have questions you don't want to ask him, questions about him, hell, if you just want to get away from his brooding for a bit,” the teasing tone makes her smile just a little, “you can call me. I'll be here.”

So, with everything happening the first several weeks of Ciri's new life, she doesn't pay it much attention. Eskel comes over a few times a week for dinner and after a month or two of this Ciri starts calling him Uncle Eskel and she feels warm all over when his whole face lights up at the title like he's just won the lottery, instead of a fourteen year old girl's affection. She's been living with Geralt for close to three months, and finally feeling a little more like herself, when it occurs to her just _who_ her Uncle Eskel could be to Geralt. And since she _is_ fourteen and has learned to be as direct as possible with her thickheaded new guardian she just plain _asks him_ over dinner.

“Is Uncle Eskel your boyfriend?” Geralt chokes on his water.

“What?” he sputters and there's a blush staining his pale cheeks and he's pushing at his silvery hair like he does when he's nervous or anxious about something.

“It's okay if he is, I was just wondering,” she shrugs and looks back at her plate to give him a break.

“Uh, well um, no... No, he's not,” he finally mumbles and it doesn't make Ciri stop wondering.

By now, she's met Geralt's other friends. She's met Lambert, who is loud and obnoxious and constantly asking her about her schoolwork and is so much fun Ciri can hardly stand it, Geralt calls them both menaces on a regular basis when they're together because Lambert is exceedingly good at getting under Geralt's skin and is teaching Ciri all of his secrets. She's met Jaskier, who is loud in a completely different way than Lambert is, and they talk about art and music and Jaskier helps her practice her violin and is the best teacher she's ever had. She's met Yen, who is straightforward and already teaching Ciri not to take crap from anyone. She's met Triss, who is the opposite to Yen in every way except that they are both so motherly it makes Ciri's chest tight. She's met Vesemir, who is not a friend but Geralt's adoptive father, and he's gruff and a little out of his depth with a teenage girl and she immediately realizes where Geralt gets most of his mannerisms from.

The thing is, Geralt doesn't behave with any of them the way he does with Eskel. Geralt is sarcastic and exasperated with Lambert, and sort of resignedly fond with Jaskier, and snarky with Yen, and soft with Triss but with Eskel he's... different. When everyone comes for dinner, which tends to happen at least once a week, Geralt seems to gravitate towards Eskel. He jokes and snarks and talks with everyone, just like Eskel does, but he tends to hover in Eskel's vicinity more than anyone else, and Eskel does the same. Ciri notices the difference more, though, when it's just the three of them. Geralt is relaxed in a way she doesn't see him relax anyplace else. He smiles more and it's _softer_ , somehow, when he turns that smile Eskel's way. More than anything, she notices how tactile he is with Eskel. Geralt tends to keep a bubble of space around him, and even Jaskier, who is constantly throwing his arms around someone for a hug, doesn't invade that space often. Geralt will hug Yen and Triss and Ciri, and he'll clap Lambert on the back and shake Vesemir's hand, and he'll heave a massive sigh on the occasions Jaskier insists on giving him a hug and pat his back awkwardly, but all those things are not initiated by Geralt.

When Ciri comes out of her room late one night to use the restroom, after she's already gone to bed and assumed Eskel went home, she hears the television on in the living room. Lambert has taught her a lot, and one of the things he's been teaching her is how to effectively hide her presence, and so they don't notice her slink to the end of the hall. Eskel is lounging back on the couch, his arms stretched across the back where he sits in the middle, and Geralt... Geralt is slumped into his side, seemingly asleep from the light snoring Ciri can hear, with his face tucked to Eskel's collar. Eskel looks so content and relaxed, his eyes closed and his head tipped back, and as Ciri watches he raises a hand and gently runs his fingers through Geralt's hair and suddenly she feels like she's intruding and retreats down the hall to slip into the bathroom and back to bed. She wakes early the next morning to find Geralt stretched on the couch, sleeping, and Eskel's truck nowhere to be seen.

None of this makes her wonder any less about what's going on. She comes to the conclusion that maybe Geralt was just feeling awkward about talking about his relationship with her and she resolves to ask Eskel about it when he picks her up from school later the following week. His reaction is less startled than Geralt's, but only just, and his denial is the same.

_Maybe they're messing with me. I wonder if Lambert put them up to it, seems like something he would do..._ But when she asks Lambert he laughs, loud and booming.

“You noticed, too, huh? I swear the only ones who haven't is the two idiots themselves. We're all taking bets on when they'll figure it out. Yen says one of us will have to tell them, Jask swears they'll figure it out by Christmas, and Triss yells at us for betting on them but she thinks Valentine's day next year.”

“So they're really not together?”

“Nope, the two dopes apparently haven't noticed that they're pining for _each other,”_ he says with another laugh.

“What do you think?”

“I think we should lock them in a room together until they figure it out but no one will listen to me,” he shrugs and Ciri giggles and lets the subject drop but starts planning. Geralt and Eskel deserve some happiness, and after all they've done for her she wants to help them get it.

She argues with herself for several weeks, and then takes Lambert a five dollar bill and tells him she agrees with Yen and he laughs and says he'll put her down and that he doesn't think just telling them will solve anything but Ciri doesn't even care anymore. She has to do something because ever since she asked them both, they've been acting weirder than usual around her and each other. She waits for the next time Eskel is over for dinner and its just the three of them sitting at Geralt's kitchen table. They're talking about some woman who brought her car in for Eskel to work on and was dumbfounded when Eskel told her it broke down because she'd never changed the oil and proceeded to scream at him when he told her the only way to fix now was to rebuild the engine and Geralt is laughing a little at Eskel's expense and Ciri finally just blurts out the same question she'd asked them both separately.

“Are you two together?” The wide-eyed shock on their faces that quickly fades to shy embarrassment would be funny if it wasn't so frustrating. They start bumbling through the same denials they gave her before at the same time and it takes them both a moment to glance at each other and notice the blush. “ _Why not?_ ” she asks and then she gets up, places her plate in the sink, and walks out of the room without another word. She stops a few feet out of the kitchen, where they won't be able to see her eavesdropping, and listens to the almost painful silence that follows her exit.

“You're blushing, Wolf,” Eskel murmurs after several minutes of the fraught silence and Ciri is a little proud of him.

“So are you,” mumbled almost petulantly if it weren't for the obvious anxiety laced through every word.

“Geralt...” Eskel's using the same quiet tone he did with her all those months ago, when they sat in her bedroom floor and he promised to try. “Are we gonna do this again? 'Cause I've always been right here... for you. Waiting. Because... well, because I know how you are.”

“You can't.”

“Can't what?”

“Feel the same...” Geralt whispers and then she hears his chair scrape the floor and she ducks into the bathroom when his foot steps start towards her. His bedroom door shuts, not quite a slam but a decisive snap that feels like a shot in the sudden silence of the house. Ciri shuffles into the kitchen to Eskel with his elbows planted on the table and his face in his hands.

“I'm sorry,” she whispers, feeling small and a little horrid. She pictured that conversation going a lot better.

“It's not your fault, not really. He always runs from this conversation and tomorrow he'll pretend it never happened. It's just usually me that brings it up and not someone else,” he mumbles without moving his hands. Ciri comes in to sit down beside him and hesitantly reaches out a hand to press to his shoulder. He gives her a wan smile then, his eyes are dark and melancholy. “Geralt... he doesn't let himself have things.”

“Why not?” She cringes a little at the echoed question.

“Because he doesn't think he deserves them,” Eskel shrugs, “no matter how much we all tell him otherwise. He never met his father, his mother took off when he was eight. She was gone for something like two days before he went to the neighbor's house because he was hungry and she called CPS. He went into foster care for a while and he won't really talk about the places before he came to Vesemir. Geralt looked his mother up when he was about your age, maybe a year or two older, and he snuck out and took a bus to a little crap town about two hours from here and he found her. He never told me what she said to him but when I saw him again, after Vesemir laid into him for taking off and not just asking, he was...different. He's been my best friend since we were eleven years old and he was always a little quieter than everyone else but he still had this air of...confidence about him. He didn't after that.

He started getting in trouble a lot, for shit that he wouldn't have done before. Fighting over nothing, stealing, Vesemir caught him smoking a few times. There was a lot of other shit, too, and it went on for a good two years or so. Ves talked him into joining the army when he graduated and I think it helped settle him but he hasn't done much of anything for himself since he found his mother. I think... I think he wanted her to tell him that she had to leave or that she tried to come back to him and couldn't and I'm fairly sure he didn't get what he wanted and so he doesn't want anything and if he does he convinces himself that he can't have it, even if he can.” He takes a breath and deflates as he blows it out, drags his hand down his face. “I should go... I'll pick you up in the morning for school and you can call if need anything before then.”

“Wait!” she calls as he pushes himself up and makes for the back door, the quickest way out of the house. He stop with his hand on the door, but he doesn't turn back to look at her. “You're just gonna leave? You're just gonna let him run from it, from _you,_ all over again?”

“What else am I supposed to do? I've tried, Ciri,” he says and she can see the tension in his shoulders.

“You promised me you would keep trying,” she tells him and it's probably a loose interpretation of what he told her all those months ago and it's definitely a low blow but she can't let herself feel bad about it, not when she has the feeling she's the only person either of them will listen to. “Please... I just... I want you both to be happy and I... I want us to be a family,” she whispers and when he does turn back to her there's something raw in his eyes that she can't quite put a name to. He walks back to her and wraps her up in his big arms and kisses the top of her head.

“You should go to bed,” and then he walks past her, but not to the door. He goes deeper into the house and she smiles when she hears the knock and click of him going into Geralt's room. She goes to her room and she closes the door and climbs into her big bed and she goes to sleep hoping Geralt will be brave, like he's teaching her to be, and take his happiness.

# # #

Eskel doesn't let himself pause or give himself time to reconsider as he walks down the hall. He raps his knuckles on the wood once and then goes in without preamble and shuts the door behind him. He puts his back against it and thinks he should probably feel a little bad about trapping Geralt in here with him but he's tired of watching him run away.

Geralt is sitting on the far side of his bed with his back to the room and he only glances over his shoulder when he hears the door close, peers through the curtain of his hair for a moment before turning away again. Eskel wishes he'd quit trying hide, wishes he'd realize that he really can't hide from Eskel anymore, hasn't been able to since they were both scrawny teenagers sneaking cigarettes behind the school, hasn't been able to since Eskel saw his smile at graduation and saw the twinkle in his blue eyes when he turned that smile Eskel's way and Eskel had thought with a surety he's never been able to shake that _I will follow him into anything, I will do anything to make him smile at me like that everyday of forever._

“Thought you'd left,” Geralt grunts, barely audible.

“Almost did, 'til that kid of yours asked me what I was doing, running away, and I realized I didn't have a good answer. I'm bettin' you don't either,” he says, not accusing, just stating.

“Not running.”

“Really? 'Cause that's what it looked like from here. It's what you always do.” That single cerulean eye peers at him again for another suspended moment and Eskel doesn't shy from it, and then Geralt's trying to hide again but he's not fast enough to hide the fear in that gaze. Eskel has always let Geralt run away from this, he's never brought it up when Geralt tries to pretend the few times they've had conversations similar to the one in his kitchen never happened. Eskel has always been a little bit afraid that he'd lose Geralt completely if he did. This time, Eskel waits, and after several minutes Geralt bites out the same two words from before.

“You can't.”

“Well, I do, so try again.”

“You _can't._ ” Eskel huffs what is almost a laugh.

“Geralt. I _do._ I lo-”

“Don't!” Geralt barks it across the room where he's finally facing Eskel, full on. His eyes are red and his lashes are wet and his chest is heaving. “Don't you dare,” he growls, low and dangerous, but Eskel has never been afraid of Geralt.

“Why? Why not? Would it be so terrible to let yourself have this one thing, Geralt? Because I know it's what you want,” Eskel counters. He keeps his voice level, calm in the midst of Geralt's chaos.

“You don't know a-”

“If you say I don't know anything about what you want, I'm gonna lay you out on this bedroom floor, you stubborn shit,” he cuts in. He won't of course, Eskel hasn't raised a hand to Geralt since they were young and hormonal and nasty the way teenage boys sometimes are, but he makes his point at least because Geralt snaps his jaw shut. “I know you pretty damn well, Geralt. We've been damn near inseparable for more than half our lives now. I know what you want, and I know what I want. I just can't figure out why in the hell you're so adamant that we can't have it.”

Geralt deflates, all his faux anger leaving him at once and pushing him to the floor with his back to the opposite wall and his face hidden behind his knees. Eskel takes the handful of steps across the room slowly and crouches down in front of his best friend.

“Geralt. You're allowed to want this for yourself. You're allowed to want to be happy. You're allowed to want me,” Eskel tells him slowly, his voice gentle in the way he can only make it for this man in front of him.

“You can't,” he whispers and Eskel reaches out to run his fingers through silver strands and coaxes those gemstone eyes up to meet his own.

“Why?” he breathes, “Why can't I love you?” It's the first time Eskel's managed to get the words out without Geralt stopping him. Geralt's sharp gasp and the way his pupils swallow up the iris make Eskel's chest tight, but then he hides his face again. Eskel barely hears the words Geralt gets out but they floor him all the same. Make Eskel realize exactly what Geralt's vicious mother said to him all those years ago, make his heart ache and _ache_ for the broken boy that had to hear them alone.

“Because I'll ruin you. I ruin everything.”

Eskel can't help the wounded noise that escapes his throat, anymore than he can help folding around Geralt's shaking body. It takes him a moment to hear his own voice, where he's whispering in Geralt's ear.

“No, baby, _never._ Jesus, Geralt, you won't ruin me, you won't ruin anything. You _can't_ , baby, because I love you. I love you and I'm not going anywhere, not running away again and I won't let you run either.” He pulls back far enough to press his forehead to Geralt's, let his hands from Geralt's face, their lips a breath apart. “She was wrong, Geralt...” He tries to hide away again, an aborted grunt of disagreement, but Eskel doesn't let him, shifts to catch his eyes again. “She was selfish and cruel and _wrong._ You are the best man I know, strong and intelligent and compassionate, and _I love you_ , do you hear me? Please... _Please,_ don't run, don't push me away again. Give us a chance, let me show you,” he whispers.

Geralt's eyes slip closed, Eskel feels the breath of his murmured _yes_ against his lips. Eskel has never had a more perfect kiss.

It's not until a short while later, curled around Geralt's back where he's sleeping that he thinks, _shit._

_Lambert's gonna swear he won the pool._

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr at etcorsolus.tumblr.com


End file.
